USCG Hires First African-American Commander for Pacific

Here’s some cool local news: in a ceremony on Coast Guard Island on Monday, the U.S. Coast Guard appointed the first-ever African-American to command operations for the Pacific Rim area.

The new commander, Vice Admiral Manson Brown, comes to Alameda from Hawaii., where he served as Commander of U.S. Coast Guard Maintenance & Logistics Command Pacific. His new job entails overseeing operations for a 73 million square mile area, 32,700 personnel and 68 cutters (including the very beautiful, state-of-the-art USCGC Waesche, which I wrote about in this blog posting last March). He’s taking over from Vice Admiral Jody Breckenridge, who was the first woman to command the Pacific Area.

Vice Admiral Brown has had an illustrious career — in 1978, he became the first African-American Regimental Commander in the 101-year history of the Coast Guard Academy in 1978. In February of this year, he became the first African American in the Coast Guard to become a three-star admiral.

The change-of-command ceremony included a gun salute, helicopter flyover, and brass band performance. You can read all about it in Peter Hegerty’s story here.

Welcome to Alameda, Vice Admiral Brown! It’s not quite Hawaii, but it’s still an island and it does have its charms.